The increased popularity of the World Wide Web has led to an explosion in catalog and online shopping. The growth in e-commerce reflects in part increased purchases from veteran online shoppers, deeper Internet penetration across the country and the increased number of familiar bricks-and-mortar retailers online.
Some of the benefits to purchasing products online include the ability to avoid crowds, perform quick price comparisons across multiple sellers, and access a wider selection of products. However, there are drawbacks to purchasing goods through a retailer web site. One drawback is the inability to inspect an item before making the purchase. A consumer that buys a product offline at a traditional retail store usually has the opportunity to inspect the color, size and quality of workmanship of a good before the purchase is made. In contrast, when a consumer shops online their decision to purchase is based largely on a written description of the product and/or a photograph of the item. No opportunity to inspect the product occurs until after the product is purchased and shipped to the consumer. As a result, many products that are purchased online are returned.
The typical return transaction involves a customer contacting a merchant, via email or phone, to inform the merchant that the customer intends to return an item previously purchased from the merchant. After approving the return, the merchant obtains a return shipping label from a commercial carrier, such as the United Parcel Service (UPS), and mails the return shipping label to the customer, along with any special instructions on how to package the item to be returned. Next, the customer repackages the item, affixes the return shipping label to the package and drops the package off with the shipper, who delivers it to the merchant.
This return process is both time consuming and highly manual. It usually takes a week or more for the merchant to obtain a return shipping label from a carrier and have the label mailed to the consumer. In addition, the merchant must have customer service representatives available to receive and approve the customer return request, and to initiate the request to the carrier to have a return shipping label generated. Further, if the label is lost or destroyed in the mailing process, additional delays and expense can result as the consumer contacts the merchant and re-initiates the returns process.
An alternative returns process is sometimes used to avoid some of the delays discussed above. In the alternative returns process, the merchant has a return shipping label generated for every product sold and encloses the label with the product when it is sent to the customer. The benefit of the alternative return process is that a customer that wishes to return an item no longer needs to contact the merchant and already has the label required to return the good. While this eliminates many of the delays inherent in the traditional returns process, the merchant is at a disadvantage. By including a return shipping label when the product is sent to the customer, the merchant essentially abrogates the right to refuse a return. And because the merchant is not notified when a customer decides to return an item, the merchant has no idea as to which or how many items are going to be returned, which can lead to inventory management problems. In addition, if the shipping label sent to the consumer is missing, lost or destroyed, the delays associated with providing a replacement shipping label return.
A need therefore exists in the industry for a returns system that eliminates the delays inherent in the traditional returns process yet allows a merchant to retain to have knowledge and control of the process. Thus, an unsatisfied need exists for an improved method and system for handling product returns that overcomes deficiencies in the prior art, some of which are discussed above.